Last week I came back from a trip to the US. I was joined half-way through by Deb, who’ll herself be writing about the Dust or Magic Conference we went to last weekend.

Arriving on the afternoon of Hallowe’en (but with a dinner appointment and jetlag that precluded going to the parade, in case you were wondering), I was in the US to see publishers. The key visit was to Candlewick Press in Somerville near Boston. They are about to launch their second season of illustrated books under the Nosy Crow imprint, and have already reprinted two of the first ten launch titles. We were finalising the Fall 2012 programme.

I like talking about our books to Candlewick. Their comments about projects in their early stages are insightful and interesting, and provide a different editorial and design perspective, as well as a different culture perspective, that can help us refine books. Sometimes they even put their finger on some small detail that has been niggling us but that, in the rush of getting books to Frankfurt or some other deadline, we’ve managed to suppress ...

Carla King’s Self-Publishing Bootcamp at Stanford University turned into a terrific event. Through everyone I talked to I could tell that it was an engaged and well-prepared group of attendees who were getting a huge amount of information about self-publishing in a few hours.

I decided not to talk about book design but instead did a presentation on figuring out your publishing strategy in an environment with a staggering number of options and a landscape that’s shifting under our feet.

You can get a really good idea of what it was about from the slides. Here’s a selection of 18 drawn from a 59-slide presentation ...

Irish mobile publisher Ideal Binary, which produces and publishes 3D interactive pop-up books for kids, has raised a total of roughly US$1 million in funding. AIB Seed Capital Fund has invested approximately US$682,000, with Enterprise Ireland contributing US$341,000 for the seed round.

Founded in 2008 by brothers and games industry vets Aidan and Kevin Doolan, Ideal Binary has published a series of 3D pop-up books based on a number of children’s fairy tales, such as ...

Amazon.com Inc. is at it again. To the consternation of much of the book industry, the online giant is again offering digital titles for less than major publishers think books are worth. And this time, the price is zero.

If you own an Amazon Kindle, as opposed to just using the Kindle app on another device, and you also belong to the company’s $79-a-year Amazon Prime service, you can now “borrow” one digital book a month from the new Amazon Lending Library for free. You can keep the book as long as you want, but you can have only one at a time.

I want to make clear at the outset that this post is not about “enhanced ebooks”, making something multiple-media out of a book that started as straight text. That’s a “want to do” problem that I’ve always been skeptical about and which I believe many, if not most, publishers are abandoning as “not commercially viable at this time”.

Today’s ruminations are about moving illustrated books from print to digital, which many of today’s book publishers will find a “must solve” problem as the channels to reach consumers effectively with illustrated books — the bookstores — are diminished in number and power by digital change.

Many children have become early adopters of touch-screen technology. They’ve taken to smartphones and tablets with ease. But what makes a good app for kids? Deborah Forte, the president of Scholastic Media, discusses how her publishing company approaches the app-creation process and what types of children’s books and characters adapt well to the transition from printed page to digital screen.

There is no other book app like this one in the market right now, as far as I know. And I think it's a very valuable contribution to a target niche that is under-represented in book apps: those aged 10 and over. Because this is the age where internal conflicts really begin, and when frienships and self-identity become more important in the lives of our children. There are few paper books in general that speak to this age group about these topics through characters, even less do it in a graphic novel (comic) format, and none other are available yet as apps. This first book of the series was available in print through Free Spirit Publishing, but the author has taken it digital via self-publishing.

Looking around a typical book publishing house in 2011, a casual observer (let’s say a veteran publishing office ergonomics consultant for the purpose of this analogy) might draw the conclusion that little has changed over the last few decades in terms of departmental structure. And they’d be right. There are still the traditional Editorial, Design, Picture Research, Rights, Permissions, Production, Sales, Marketing and Finance sections, all required in one form or another to produce print publications in whichever order the company prefers (sales, finance or editorial-driven publishing, anyone?).

Peering a little closer, it will become apparent that it’s not just books that these departments are now producing, but also a digital version or equivalent, or perhaps something else digital altogether.

Actors often talk about how different it is to act in a movie vs. a live theater production. In film production, an actor can't measure his performance until months or years later when it finally makes it to the multiplex. In a Broadway show, there is instantaneous feedback. The actor knows immediately whether the audience laughs or cries at the right points. The theater production has information that can be used to make the show better the next night, and the next, and the next. The audience response is providing a form of analytics for the show's actors and director.

Mobile apps are somewhere between a movie and live theater. App makers can't watch over the shoulder of their users, but they can infer what they like from how users interact with the app (do they laugh, do they cry?). They do this through analytics services that aggregate usage data to provide reports explaining how customers use the app. Developers take that information to update apps so that the 1.1 version is better than 1.0, and so on. These services are very beneficial to small app developers (comprising 88% of the marketplace) because they do not have the thousands of dollars to spend on market research.

British businessman James Daunt gave up a career on New York's Wall Street at the end of the 1980's to occupy the world of bookshops -- "the kind of bookshops he would like to visit" (shops, not stores, as Daunt likes to call them). If you've ever been to one of the 6 extraordinarily beautiful Daunt bookshops in London (a tourist attraction in travel guides) you will understand why people call James Daunt one of the all-time great booksellers.

Waterstone's is to the British what Barnes and Noble is to Americans -- the last of the UK's major book chains, after Border's collapse last year. Founded in 1982 by Tim Waterstone, the chain consists of 296 shops. In 1993, Waterstone's was bought by its major competitor, WH Smith, which sold it to HMV Group PLC in 1998. Billionaire Russian businessman Alexander Mamut bought the struggling chain earlier this year from HMV and installed James Daunt as its Chief Executive.

Can James Daunt achieve success with Waterstone's in face of its competitors and the evolution in the ways we read? I had the opportunity to discuss this with him ...

Celebrate National Young Reader's Day - $0.99 SALE! iOS Universal Book App

Brave Rooney is an ordinary boy in an extraordinary situation. He goes to school in Magesticville, a place where everyone is a super-hero. But Rooney lives on the border with Normalville and is decidely not super at anything. The school even has to hire a school nurse for the first time, just for Rooney. No one had ever gotten sick before he attended. But despite his struggles to fit in, Rooney turns out to have one thing the other 'super' kids do not, making him a hero of sorts for a unique kind of bravery ...

The children’s eBook space is evolving so quickly and changing so fast, this is almost Part 3 of my look at digital books for kids. Last month, GeekDad looked at a number of different models and types of eBooks that are out there and explored a little bit about how that shapes the way we tell stories and access books for our children on mobile devices. And we can now add one more to that list.

uTales is a web-based start-up offering another option in how we tell stories and find picture books for our children. uTales offers a wide range of digital picture books for kids through a subscription model. The subscription model, like others, provides parents and children unlimited access to an entire library of digital picture books that can be read anywhere and anytime in the uTales iPad app and on uTales.com. I have not spent enough time looking at the quality of the books on offer, but they charge $9.99 per month for subscriptions which seems quite reasonable for parents who are increasingly turning to their mobile devices at storytime.

What is interesting, though, is the way that uTales wants to use their subscriber community ...

For every developer making millions in Apple's app store, there are thousands who've had their dreams smashed into a million little pixels. What makes the App Store so popular with developers--and how can you succeed? One developer's tale of hitting the Apple jackpot.

The world of book-apps is a crowded place, with traditional publishers jostling with developers and startups (and sometimes collaborating with them) to explore the creative potential of digital books, and how to make money from them.

Callaway Digital Arts has been one of the more high-profile book-apps startups ever since it was spun out from book publisher Callaway Arts & Entertainment in the early days of the iPad.

Join us Wednesday, November 16th at 6PM PST for a Twitter Party introducing a new line of educational omBooks from our recent partnership with Random House Children’s Books. There’s No Place Like Space!: All About Our Solar System kicks of an exciting collection of The Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library omBooks, which introduce children to basic science concepts in a fun, interactive way. There’s No Place Like Space! is our most ambitious omBook to date so we’re very excited to finally share it with you and hear your feedback.

Please join us for a discussion on educational apps – why you like them, how you use them, what features you’re looking for. How important is it that apps have educational value? Do you allow your children more screen time if you feel they are learning something? ...

Publishing App Expo is a two-day, four-track event that will teach you how to build apps within budget, maximize discoverability, and monetize content across all publishing platforms. The conference unites book and magazine publishers, developers, digital content strategists, editors, authors, and entrepreneurs for an extensive look into the cutting-edge world of publishing app design, demographics, and distribution.

You'll hear from magazine, book publishing, and app development experts and leaders who will draw a comprehensive roadmap of the publishing app world. Session topics include:

App Building 101: Hear app developers offer a step-by-step tutorial for building an app from scratch.

How Publishing Apps Connect with Readers is Real Life: Find out the techniques needed to help authors, magazines and publishers utilize apps to find customers in the real world.

Maximizing Discoverability & Profitability in Book App Marketplaces: Discover how to create eye-catching content, rise up the Top App lists, and promote your app in the right places.

Finding & Keeping Subscribers in a Sea of Content: Experts and successful app creators share tips for making your app stand out in a crowded field ...

Picture Book Month ... is "a wonderful celebration of some very talented picture book authors, illustrators and enthusiasts. Each day there is a post about the importance of picture books. There are also links to a host of people actively engaged in promoting picture books.

Less than two years ago, few could imagine how much children’s literature would be transformed by tablet technology and the app revolution. Children can Pat the Bunny, Journey into the Deep and visit Richard Scarry's Busytown, all from their iPads.

Today, consumers can choose from a wide variety of children's-book apps, with features ranging from basic audio-visual elements to elaborate interactive components. The Austin, Texas, chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators recently sponsored a one-day symposium featuring numerous accomplished professionals in electronic publishing.

The following recap offers a glimpse into how digital publishing may shift in the near future, and what readers can expect ...

Nosy Crow is a UK-based publishing company established by Kate Wilson who has a very well-regarded history in children’s publishing heading up teams at MacMillan Children’s Books and Scholastic UK. What should be appreciated is that Nosy Crow is not just about apps, but about stories for children and they are telling those stories through both books and apps. In their first year they have published over 23 children’s books, secured some strong distribution deals and made an impact in the children’s eBook and app sphere with two well-designed fairytale stories.

I thought it was worth profiling Nosy Crow as it comes to the end of its first year because for me as a GeekDad and a writer/researcher on the world of children and families, its approach is one others could learn from. What was clear when I met with Kate Wilson on her trip to Australia earlier this year was that Nosy Crow is respectful of children. This means they are interested in not just selling books and apps, but in creating stories that will be memorable and loved by children, they respect children enough to invest their time and money in quality products – and the results show. The traditional publishing world is continuing to grapple with the changes mobile technology is bringing to their world ...

Coffee shops can be amazing places. During a lively conversation between myself, Ush, and Ahmed at our local grind, we solidified the idea of hosting a Workshop. On December 2nd, a group of 50 app developers will gather in San Carlos (CA) to hash out what’s next in Apps for Kids. Here is the agenda so you can see what we’re up to…

When iPads suddenly populate English language learner classrooms, teachers often face a steep adoption curve. The reason isn't the technology itself, but rather because too many districts are "not focused on the professional development piece," according to Jared Bloom, who serves as supervisor of assessment and technology at South Huntington Union Free School District (NY).

Bloom, who also teaches an iPad training session for ELL teachers, said that even before they begin to use iPads in their classrooms, the first step is to get the devices into the teachers' hands and then allow a minimum half-day training session.

Marketing, publicity, technology, legal skills … to succeed in a digital world, authors need to master more than the keyboard, writes Linda Morris.To parents and children, she is known affectionately as the hippo lady but her business cards read: Hazel Edwards, authorpreneur.

The nomenclature was coined three years ago by the writer of children's books best known for There's a Hippopotamus on Our Roof Eating Cake, when Edwards was scratching around for a name for a workshop about the convergence of authors' creative and commercial interests.

Edwards is one of a new breed of authors and illustrators who have turned themselves into a small business to take advantage of the developing space of the internet.

Edwards, an ambassador for next year's National Year of Reading, argues it is not enough for authors to craft words or images for specific audiences. Writers must learn marketing, publicity, technology, and legal skills to create and maintain their self-employment in the ''business of ideas'' ...

An AP article from October 26, 2011 still has stuck in my head for a while because it raised an issue that I’m sensitive to: parenting by iPad.

Raising small kids (in my case, a four and a one year old) in a high-tech household means that it’s only a matter of time before the little one discover the wonders of the iPhone or iPad — then what do you do?

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